Producer: Beyond
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Mike Singleton, David Gautrey, Alan Jardine

The Northlanders are unwelcome visitors in the Islands Of The Western Sea. The King Of The Isles is set on revenge and orders a fearsome sceptre to be wrought - but the King himself is struck down, and his enemies gain the very power with which he sought to destroy them.

So the sceptre must be found and destroyed, in this graphic adventure based on programmer Mike Singleton's own play-by-mail game.

You have command of a warrior band that seeks the eponymous evil sceptre. The Red Shadow Lords we your deadly adversaries and must be overwhelmed at all cost. You can enlist the help of other fighting companies; but they're neutral at first, and even after taking your side are liable to desert you.

Each character has one of eight different personalities, which makes him suited to certain tasks and not to others.

Your warriors are controlled by commands from a set which includes kill, protect, defend, seek, bewitch and petrify. Each fighter can be given several orders at once, to be carried out in sequence.

But once an order has been issued you have no control over a warriors actions, and he'll act independently during unexpected encounters.

You can watch any warrior in action, and hear the clashing swords. When one of your warriors is fighting an enemy, others may line up waiting to fight your warrior.

A scan option provides a scrolling overview of the land through which your quest takes place.

Dark Sceptre has been eagerly awaited after the success of programmer Mike Singleton's Lords Of Midnight (Smashed in Issue 7) and Doomdark's Revenge (an Issue 13 Smash; both earned ten out of ten on the first CRASH rating system!).

A sequel to them, Eye Of The Moon, is promised. But it's taken Singleton more than a year to develop Dark Sceptre, and not even he can complete it in less than 17 days... yet.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: superbly-animated large characters
Sound: basic, but effective, spot effects

Dark Sceptre is quite something: The graphics are huge, well-animated and excellently coloured, and the gameplay is complex: it took me a good while to get to grips with things. When you can play for hours and not double back on yourself you start feeling you've got the hang of it. The presentation is very good, too.
MIKE [95%]

Dark Sceptre is quite a departure from Mike Singleton's Doomdark's Revenge and Lords Of Midnight, of which I'm a big fan - but it's another engrossing Singleton game. And here he uses an ingenious masking technique to get past attribute clash. The warriors walk and fight convincingly. But the lack of detailed instructions is frustrating, and much time is spent discovering the object of the game and who's best to befriend. Still, if you can put up with this, Dark Sceptre becomes rewarding.
ROBIN [85%]

Like all Mike Singleton's games, Dark Sceptre has outstanding graphics. The main character and backgrounds are excellently drawn and animated, and colour clash doesn't seem to exist in Mike's mind; all the characters' shapes are similar, but the colour of their heads and hats keeps changing. Sound is used well. Dark Sceptre is another fantastic addition to Mike Singleton's list of hits.
NICK [84%]

Firebird
£7.95
Reviewer: Mike Gerrard

As far as scores go it's 999 all the way down the line, and you might need to call out the emergency services to help you through this new little beauty from Mike Singleton. It even goes beyond what he did with earlier titles like Lords Of Midnight and Doomdark's Revenge as hes produced a state-of-the-art graphical tactics adventure that adds a smidgeon of Swords And Sorcery and a hint of Heavy On The Magik to those previous games. Can you imagine a Doomdark in which you're down on the ground controlling individual characters as well as deciding overall strategy?

The game is set in the Isles of the Western Sea, where the Lord of the Isles, has made a big mcCock-Up. He forged the Dark Sceptre to defeat the invading Northlanders but they seized the Sceptre and absorbed its power, becoming the Lords of the Shadow. They are now gripped by evil and ruled by the Sceptre and the forces of the Isles must find and destroy the Dark Sceptre itself.

There are seven teams of warriors roaming the Isles each indicated by a colour. Umbrarg's warriors are the Shadow Lords and are red while white marks your own team. The five sets of fighters in between should begin the game neutrally and both you and the Shadow Lords can try to beat or befriend these warriors as you think fit.

Each team is made up of men of various qualities from Thanes to Thralls. The Thane is the team commander, without whom the entire company will be more readily defeated. A Thrall is a simple underling, a pawn in comparison to other more complex characters like Mystics, Heralds Savages and Assassins.

In the top window we see the excellently animated characters going about their business, loping along in brilliant graphic detail. Below that and to the left are the five basic options through which the game is controlled. Top option is WATCH and this allows you to see at once any fights that take place when hostile characters meet. Only one fight will take place at a time, and you're alerted to it by the distant clash of sword on sword - good sound effects too. The outcome is strictly according to each character's attributes, and with evenly-matched characters then victory goes to the aggressor. The meek shall definitely not inherit the Isles of the Western Sea.

You can inspect a character's vices and virtues by choosing the CHECK option and try to match these with the tasks you set.

A small window in the lower part of the screen shows your immediate surroundings, and by selecting SCAN you can see the map of the whole Western Isles, looking remarkably like a map of the London Underground. The PLAN option is definitely where the game is won or lost, as it's through this that you give your men their commands.

As well as nifty graphics and sound, Dark Sceptre is well designed making it accessible and easy to play - in the sense that it's very quick and simple to grasp, without needing keyboard overlays, 64-page instruction manuals and seventeen fingers.

Label: Beyond
Author: Mike Singleton
Price: £9.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

Deep in time Dark Sceptre featured like a dream upon the cover of last September SU. Big was its graphics and original its gameplay.

Each month a review copy was expected and there much hunting through the SU mailbag. Many young and noble warrior journalists attempted the mailbag quest but all failed and there was much disappointment.

After many months Dark Sceptre drifted into myth and legend and those who still recounted the legend of the massive animated warriors stalking the Isles of the Western Sea were soon treated as halfwits and fools.

And the memory of Dark Sceptre all but died, kept alive by a tiny band of faithful followers who swore that one day Dark Sceptre would return. "That damn game will turn up sometime," they said. And to after many eons it did...

To remind those whose memories don't go back as far as last year, Dark Sceptre is a strategy game with an adventure-type theme.

It achieves, in a totally different way, the same thing as Mike Singleton's Lords of Midnight - namely presenting what is essentially a 'think' game in a way that is both visually interesting and genuinely involving to play.

Dark Sceptre makes the mechanics of play as easy as possible - menus and cursor select systems - but the strategies you might use in playing the game are almost infinite. For reasons too fixed in the myth of cliche to bother to repeat here your brave team of warriors has to recover an all powerful thingmy called the Dark Sceptre. You control a team of good guys and there's one equivalent team of bad guys and various other teams of not-yet-decided guys. To win you need, among other things, to win some of these uncommitted people over to your cause.

Each member of your team has a different set of skills. The Thane is the leader - if he gets killed the rest of the team will probably get very depressed. Mystics have magical powers and are not surprisingly, not much good at thuggish knee-in-the-groin type stuff. Other members of your team are persuaders, messengers and killers.

Playing is like being a football coach. In each 'go' you select the members of your team and give them instructions, sometimes sets of instructions, from a vast list available. These include Kill followed by somebody's name or Bewitch (turn named person into a spy) Follow (ie track but don't attack) and various sorts of threatening or cajoling of the other team warriors into joining your side. Aside from people there are significant objects in Dark Sceptre which give import powers and commands like Take, Grabe and Use relate to these.

Having issued instructions you can sit back and see what happens - watch each warrior move across a map of the playing area and flick screens between each warrior to see them in detail - the massive sprite graphics that are the game's trademark.

Despite what you might think, it isn't boring at all. It's fascinating watching to see what happens and, anyway, different warriors accomplish their orders at different times so there are always new plans to be instigated.

Sooner or later, on purpose or by design, a good guy will meet a bad guy and there will be a fight. Swords are drawn and they fight it out. There is no luck in any battle, the outcome is the inevitable result of the relative strengths, taking into account a host of factors of the two combatants. When two fighters are closely matched fights may continue for quite some while - with the advantage constantly changing. When each 'turn' is over you take stock of where you stand - how you faired in your 'go' - and issue your next set of instructions to your team.

Dark Sceptre is in its own way. now, as original a game as Lords of Midnight was then, and technically it's very clever indeed.

And it still looks impressive, even a year after its essential details were finalised.

Don't buy it under the mistaken impression that it is some sort of Barbarian equivalent though, or you'll be disappointed. If, on the other hand, you like the sound of a stunningly impressive, highly original and dramatic strategy game, well, are you in for a treat!

Make some strange friends with Firebird.

Reapers, assassins, fools; lend me your ears - for the darkness descends on this fair Western isle of ours. The Northlanders, once mere men like you and I, have been touched by the malice of the Dark Sceptre and have become the Lords Of The Shadows; gripped by evil.

That, then, is the scene set for this long-awaited Mike Singleton game. The player takes charge of a band of warriors of varying ability and tries to use their differing characteristics in an attempt to befriend and recruit allies from among the other six tribes on the island. The objective is to recover and destroy the Dark Sceptre before it can do more harm.

You view the game through an on-screen window that displays either a representation of the characters on their travels or a menu displaying a number of possible choices that are available to whichever character you happen to be controlling. Alternating between characters simply involves moving either your joystick (or pressing a key) left or right. You then issue up to three separate orders to the character, when you have finished, the screen switches to show your character stomping off to complete the first order (to the best of his ability.)

Orders possible include, HARASSing other warriors; BRIBE other warriors; GUARDing objects; WAIT AT places and WAIT FOR warriors. There are approx 30 different commands that can be issued to any number of your characters. As mentioned earlier, these characters have peculiar attributes which need utilising; Mystics are usually in possession of magical powers which allows them to carry out orders requiring a certain knowledge of such things, whereas Fools (despite the name) are persuasive and good talkers, which makes them handy at convincing other characters of your worthy and just crusade.

Merely attempting to take the Sceptre at the beginning of the game is not such a good idea as several steps have to be taken to ensure the power of the thing doesn't destroy you. There are lots of other objects found around the isle that can be utilised in the attempt to reach your goal, and it's up to the player to discover how these objects are best used.

Dark Sceptre has a very familiar feel about it if you've ever played Lords Of Midnight or Doomdark's Revenge, in that the game is deep and complex with enough happening to keep you engrossed and playing for months to come.

Reviewer: Andy Smith

RELEASE BOX
Spec, £7.95cs, Reviewed
Ams, £8.95cs, £14.95dk, Jan 88

Predicted Interest Curve

1 min: 68/100
1 hour: 55/100
1 day: 83/100
1 week: 88/100
1 month: 72/100
1 year: 50/100

MACHINES: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Beyond
PRICE: £7.95

Legend has it that Mike Singleton had written/was writing a game called Dark Sceptre and it was REALLY SOMETHING. At one stage screen shots even appeared of the game and then nothing, For months and months nothing was heard.

Had we imagined it? Was it all a dream? Did anybody really care anymore? And then at PCW back in September there was Mike demonstrating the game. Eventually a review copy was forthcoming. It was even scheduled for release in November but, because of C+VG's deadlines, I don't know if the game actually made it into the shelves.

So just in case you ever get a chance to buy the game, this is what you get. This is a strategy/adventure game very much in the style of what you would expect from the man who invented the brilliant Lords of Midnight and Doomdark's Revenge. The graphics are stunning for the Spectrum. The characters - and there are apparently 64 of them - are huge. The setting is the Isles of the Western Sea. Power has been lost by the Lord of the isles to the Northmen and the lands are now under the evil influence of the Dark Sceptre.

You control a group of good guys, each with their own powers, who must gain superiority over the baddies. Meanwhile there are lots of other characters floating about who are neither good or bad. Part of the game involves trying to get the undecided onto your side.

The game is controlled by joystick-selected commands (or keys) and you give members of your teams instructions to carry out. Having done this, you sit back and watch what happens, following progress on a map.

The idea is to find and Destroy the Dark Sceptre, which is hidden among the 4,000 locations in the game.

There are a huge number of commands and instructions available to you. For example, you can follow, protect, stalk, harass, avoid, find, challenge, threaten.

There are eight different types of warrior you encounter in the game, each with his own powers, strengths and weaknesses.

THANE: The commander. Without a Thane, the members of your company will be more likely to desert. MYSTIC: Mystics usually possess magical powers. HERALD: A messenger and a fighter. ASSASSIN: A hunter and a killer: REAPER: The executioner. Strikes fear into others. FOOL: A talker, not as foolish as his name suggests. SAVAGE: Wild man of the woods - tough and resilient. THRALL: An underling, a prawn. Being simple characters, thralls do not have complex personalities. There are lots of them, though.

During the game, there are five control options that you can select using up/down on the joystick to highlight the option. The fire button confirms your choice. By using left and right you can change the warrior that you have currently selected.

Watch: This option allows you to watch a fight. If you hear the sound of clashing metal, then one of your warriors is engaged in battle. Press fire on this option to WATCH the fight.

Scan: This allows you to see a full map of the island, which appears in the viewing window. The positions of each of your warriors are marked in yellow on the map. The white square indicates the position of the warrior that you have currently selected.

Check: This option allows you to check the personality of the warrior you are currently watching and the last orders he was given. A summary of his personality appears in the viewing window.

Plan: This option allows you to plan your orders for the warrior that you are currently watching. A question and answer session happens in the viewing window until your orders are complete. If you select the GO TO command then the map will appear in the viewing window. You must move the cursor to the place that you want to go to (you may only select junctions) and press fire.

Dark Sceptre is certainly a challenge, and if you liked Lords of Midnight, you'll go for this. Was it worth the wait? We'll pass on that...

Spectrum 48/129 Cassette: £7.95

FROM OUT OF THE ICE STORM

Dark Sceptre marks the long awaited and welcome return of Mike Singleton (Lords Of Midnight, Doomdark's Revenge) - on a less happy note, it also marks the death of Beyond, for the game was originally to be released under that label. So uncertainty about Beyond's future - it never really made its mark after being sold to Telecomsoft by EMAP - has now been resolved. Lately there has been a glut of arcade games but Dark Sceptre serves to redress the balance between them and the complex arcade-adventures that have been notably absent of late.

As with so many Mike Singleton games, there is a deal of background story, which is worth outlining, if only to give some indication of the atmosphere which the game engenders.

Peace reigned supreme in the Isles of the Western Sea, The Lord of the Isles ruled with a kindly hand and all was tranquil until the eve of a winter storm when in disarray ships of the Northlanders were thrown up onto the shores of the Western Islands. The Lord of the isles smiled kindly upon the new arrivals and gave them succour.

When spring came and the ice storms quelled, the Lord of the isles offered oaken ships to his guests so that they might return to their homelands . But the Northlanders coveted the richness of the Western Isles and refused the offer. Drawing their swords, they demanded lands of their own. Their might was too great even for the Lord's Sword Of Lightning to overthrow. Hiding his wrath, he granted them rich farmlands and bade them abide in peace within their new domain.

Fearing yet more treachery, the Lord ordered the finest smiths in the land to forge a Sceptre Of Power. It took five years to complete; during which time the Northlanders grew more demanding until nothing would satisfy them except the Lord of the Isles very throne. Raising the Dark Sceptre above his head the Lord summoned the Dark Powers to defeat the Northlanders. Lightning leapt from the Sceptre and began consuming the Northlanders. But with the strength of the possessed their leader sprang upon the Lord and smote him with the Sceptre, then raised it high and called upon the Darkness to save them.

The winds died down and pain was quenched, yet at the same time their physical being seemed the lose substance and became shadowy; In return for its protecting them, the Northlanders owed allegiance to the evil power within the Dark Sceptre.

COMPLEX INTERACTION

The player is in command of a company of warriors seeking to destroy the Dark Sceptre and restore tranquility to the once-golden Western Isles. To hinder the player's movements the computer controls other companies of warriors. Most of these are indifferent to your cause at the start of the game although they can be persuaded to aid you in your task, but the Shadow Lords are your sworn enemies, whose sole purpose is protect the Dark Sceptre and annihilate your company. How the Dark Sceptre is recovered and destroyed is left up to the player to find out.

Dark Sceptre is a complex interactive arcade adventure which can be played by the use of a joystick. Moving the joystick left or right flicks through the characters that you currently control, showing their current status and whereabouts in graphics and text forms. Moving the joystick up or down highlights one of the five major options. These are Watch, Scan, Check, Plan and Quit. Pressing fire when one of these options is highlighted may take you to another sub-menu or switch control to another character.

Watch: when one of your men is involved in combat, you hear the clash of steel, but you cannot interfere in a fight to determine its outcome - the result is entirely dependent on the individuals' personalities - selecting watch shows the character currently fighting.

Scan: a map of the Western Isles with the whereabouts of your characters indicated and the position of your current character highlighted.

Check: a run down on the current character's personality, a list of his present orders and any objects he may be carrying.

Plan: most complex command available and really the whole crux of the game; a sub-menu of possible commands you may give your characters. Moving the joystick up or down highlights each command. Selecting one takes you to another sub-menu to choose the object or character that is subject to the command. Commands - and there are many - range from killing the enemy to charming them onto your side.

The characters have their own attributes which affect how well they are able to carry out your orders, some are better suited to some tasks than others. All told there are eight different types of personality: Thane, the commander who leads your group: Mystic, beings with magical powers; Herald, good for giving messages; Assassin, a hunter and killer: Reaper, strikes fear into others; Fool, a talker; Savage, tough and resilient: Thralls, who are simple characters but numerous.

The final option, Quit, caters for loading and saving current positions in the game as well as abandoning a lost cause. It can, of course, also act as a useful pause mode for the essential tea and meal breaks without which the Western Isles would run dry.

Price: £7.95
Machine: Spectrum
Publisher: Firebird/Beyond

Mike Singleton made his name with Lords of Midnight and its follow-up, Doomdarks Revenge, but we've been waiting a long time for another game of equal quantity. This is partly due to Mike's heavy involvement in the infamous Star Trek game, which has been 'imminent' for about two years now. He did produce a Swords and Sorcery game for Melbourne House last summer, so eminently forgettable that I've forgotten what it is called, but with Dark Sceptre he's definitely back on the right track and along with the rest of the programming team, Alan Jardlne and David Gautrey, he's come up with the kind of game that seems to cram at least 128k of code into a 48K machine.

Come with me to the Isles of the Western Sea, ruled by the Lord of the Isles. In an attempt to defeat the invading Northlanders, the Lord of the Isles forged the Dark Sceptre of the title, a weapon of awesome power. Unfortunately this fell into the hands of the Northlanders who made use of its might. From then on they became known as the evil Lords of the Shadow.

It is your job to organise the various forces that are wandering round the Isles in an attempt to defeat the Lords of the Shadow by destroying the Dark Sceptre. Some of the forces may not want to be organised, of course, and some may be recruited by the Lords of the Shadow before you can get to them, but you'll just have to do the best you can.

You'll also have to play Dark Sceptre on a colour TV because the seven sets of forces are each shown by a different colour. Your own are white, naturally, and the Lords of the Shadows are red, with five other teams of warriors you should be trying to turn to white... or leave in a pool of red blood on the floor. Killing someone from another team means that they cannot join the opposition, but it also means that they cannot join you, either, and you are going to need all the strength you can get if you are to stand any chance at all of destroying the Dark Sceptre.

So how does the game operate? Very simply, which is one of its virtues. You just need a joystick or five keys on the keyboard, for left-right-up-down-select. The bulk of the screen is given over to graphic displays of the current locations, which are nicely done but kept necessarily simple. You can flip through the hundreds of locations making up the Isles by using the movement options, and by choosing the SCAN option from the main menu at the foot of the screen you can see a full map of the Isles at any time.

Naturally it isn't just background graphics in the current location: there are the characters as well. These are very large and highly detailed sprites who are beautifully animated. With the exception of your own men, they wander around under the program's control.

Recruiting and fighting goes on all over the map, whether you're there to see it or not, but if you hear the clash of swords it means that there is a fight going on somewhere. By selecting the WATCH option, that location can be switched to instantly. You can't interfere in the fight, and only one takes place at a time, but when the going gets tough, you will be moving straight from one fight to another, should you choose to watch them all. The outcome is governed according to each warrior's characteristics, and if they happen to be of equal strength, cunning etc, the aggressor will ultimately come out on top.

Each warrior in each team has different qualities, and the core of the game lies in deploying your forces to make best use of individual skills. Only a Mystic, for example, can cast magic spells, while other men in the team might be strong, or cowardly, or cunning, or persuasive, or a combination of these qualities.

Commands are issued to the characters using the PLAN option, and the more complex a warrior's characteristics, the more commands he is capable of absorbing at one time. You might instruct a simple but strong character to kill any enemy he finds, or to kill a specific warrior on the opposing team. The weaker characters you can perhaps instruct to attempt to recruit other men to your cause, or send them off to find the swords, sceptres and other objects scattered about the land. Some characters will accept up to three commands (all input via menu screens with lengthy sets of options), so you can pack them off to find a sword and seek out a particular enemy to kill, or find a neutral character and attempt to recruit him.

The number of options is immense. As you flip from screen to screen to inspect the proceedings and check out each warrior's plans and status, you really do feel that all this action is constantly going on around you, with you in the thick of it trying to organise your troops.

Dark Sceptre is hard to categorise, easy to get into and should take months to master. It is also incredibly cheap, the kind of quality game that you might expect to see put out at £14.95. At £7.95 it's the bargain of the year. Every Spectrum should have one, without doubt, and it's good to see Mike Singleton back at his best.